While a good part of Barça’s players soak in the Mediterranean, taking advantage of the holidays that Quique Setién has given them after finishing second in the league, in the premises of the Camp Nou and the sports city the activity is not ‘stop. It is true that the Champions League invites some decisions to be postponed, such as the future of the coach on the bench, but there are others that can be advanced beyond what happens on August 8 against Napoli or to a hypothetical final phase of maximum competition. This is the case of the termination chapter, which involves almost half of the workforce, transfer or exchange meat depending on market developments. The club needs, on the one hand, to continue thinning the payroll in a time of economic crisis and, on the other, to generate resources to fill the weakest demarcations of the team, starting with the front, where the only goal his name is Lautaro Martínez. The pandemic, the shadow of the first year in white for more than a decade and the urgency of the coups d’état of a Bartomeu who is running out of office provide an unusual situation in which Barça must behave like a selling club for to be able to face the future with a minimum of enthusiasm. Rarely in recent history had the Barça club had so many players on the starting line-up.
Once Pjanic is signed to offset the sale salvacomptes by Arthur Melo, Barça are now moving tabs to find the funding they need to face the hiring of Lautaro. A long negotiation is expected with Inter Milan, who first want to deposit between 60 and 70 million in cash and then complete the operation with one or two players in exchange for the Argentine striker. In this context, Barça negotiators have been offering Júnior Firpo for weeks, who has not met expectations and has not been able to dispute Jordi Alba’s position. The Betis winger is young, maintains a fairly high market value (20 million) and would accept an air change. It would also fit with the pretensions of the entity neroazzurra Rafinha Alcántara, who will return to Barcelona after a year on loan to Celta de Vigo and who was about to be transferred to Inter two summers ago. At that time his freedom cost 35 million, but now it is worth only 16, which would facilitate a transfer as part of the pact to dress Lautaro as Barça. More complicated seems to do business with Samuel Umtiti who, despite having a poster in the football for his status as world champion, he carries an unreliable reputation because of a chronic knee injury. The other downside of the Frenchman is that he earns more than six million euros per season under the renewal he signed two years ago, just before winning the World Cup and starting the ordeal of evil that has brought him to the sad point where it is now.
A showcase to ‘place’ Coutinho
Salary is also a problem in the case of Philippe Coutinho, another player with whom Barça intends to draw this summer. The club has already assumed that it will not recover, not by a long shot, the more than 120 million that was spent two years ago, but it will stay, paying its high fee and taking advantage of it more as an end than as inside, if you do not find one interested in between 50 and 60 kilos. Virtually the only potential buyers of the Rio de Janeiro midfielder are English clubs. Bayern, where he has been on loan for a year, has already decided that he will not be in possession but will be able to use him in the Champions League. Therefore, maximum competition could serve as a springboard for Cou return to the Premier League and leave to the Barça treasury some money that neither Dembélé, nor Rakitic nor Arturo Vidal, also transferable, would not be able to generate in case of leaving the club: the Norman, because he spends more time in the infirmary than on the grass, and Croatian and Chilean because they are already well over thirty.
On the other hand, age, market value, salary and reliability do accompany the possibility of making calls (or exchanges) with Nélson Semedo. Although he has played 32 league games, the Portuguese does not generate enough consensus to be considered non-transferable. This is why it is understood to appear constantly as a possible currency. The latest information from the newspaper Sport, places him at Manchester City as a result of an operation that would involve the arrival in Barcelona of his compatriot João Cancelo, a right winger like him, and the return of Eric Garcia, a central defender trained at La Masia, in Barça’s discipline. Summer will be busy.
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